


disequilibrium

by jadeddiva



Series: adaptation [1]
Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, full of self-loathing and crankiness, this is my trash can and i am okay with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 14:46:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10573455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeddiva/pseuds/jadeddiva
Summary: He knows this girl is too stubborn and too headstrong, but he also knows that the wolves that drove her father here will find her as well.  Or, why Beast saves Belle from the wolves.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to answer the one question I've had since I was eight. Here we go. 
> 
> Thanks Madison and Sarah for encouraging my Dan Stevens problem.

  **part 1: disequilibrium**

There is a girl in the castle.

He doesn’t notice, at first (he is distracted, after all, with his energy and anger directed towards the interloping thief languishing in his cold cell).  It’s not until she starts her climb that he can hear her footsteps, can smell the faint scent of lavender which lingers on her clothes. Strangely enough, he can also feel her presence in his bones.  It is a vibration, a low-pitched hum that resonates from the servants in the kitchen upwards as she moves throughout their home.

The air changes with her arrival, and everything shifts, including the rose and its petals (he is so attuned to the rose, so aware of it after all these years that he can almost hear the petal as starts to wither on the stem).

It’s not until she reaches her father that he sees her, wide eyes and windswept hair, and everything shifts once more.

His anger grows, deep and dark and full of frustration and underneath all that, loss.

She is beautiful and fierce, stubborn and selfless, and when she locks herself into the cell, the _clang_ of the metal echoes through his soul (she has unknowingly imprisoned them both).

 

* * *

 

…

 

 

_Maybe she is the one that will break the curse_ , Cogsworth says.

_She IS the one that will break the curse_ , Lumière insists.

_If you just let her_ , Mrs. Potts reminds.

_Please_ is their silent shared refrain.

…

 

He didn’t choose to be cursed.  There have been hundreds of foolish princes before him and there will be hundreds more after him. Those princes have been and will continue to be foolish and vain and indulgent just so long as they find themselves on the right side of a powerful enchantress.

He knows he will always be the cautionary tale.

He will admit that the curse of the enchantress was utterly thorough.  Instead of the slender frame and angelic face he bore as the prince, he became an imposing and hideous beast. His servants became the objects he collected, each intricate and beautiful in their own way but hidden from the outside world, forgotten by their families and friends, their only crime their compliant behavior as he preened and paraded through France.  

His grand palace became a derelict and run-down estate, and the land around it covered with snow and ice even in the fierce heat of July (it has been too long since the summer sun touched his face, too long since he has looked out his window and seen something other than a frozen landscape).  

Even time itself changed, as none of them grew older and they lingered in what felt like an everlasting day, repeating endlessly for all of eternity.  

It has been years since the curse, and every day he comes to a deeper understanding of just who he was and what that has meant for all of them.  It has been years since the curse, and every day he grows angrier at everyone – the enchantress, the servants, and finally himself – and in his frustration, he becomes a little less human and a little more beastly.  He forgets the manners taught to him for hours during his childhood, he forgets the airs and graces polished at Versailles and practiced on the beautiful people invited to his parties.

He forgets all of that, and forgets himself along with it.

The enchantress wanted total devastation and in the end, that was what she received.

 

…

 

It is surprising that the movement of the girl from her cell to the East Wing escapes his notice, but it does because he is preoccupied with the rose.  He is always preoccupied with the rose these days, especially since the petals keep falling faster and faster and he knows he has less and less time to break the curse, to free himself and his servants.

There is a petal, hanging precariously from the stem, more than ready to fall at any moment.   When that petal falls, there will be less than a dozen left.  

He knows what his staff wants.  Their hope and faith that this girl ( _Belle_ , he reminds himself, he knows her name now) will end their years suffering is so strong that it threatens to overwhelm him. He wants the same, but he feels that even asking this of him – to somehow make this obstinate village girl fall in love with him, for him to fall in love with her - is too much.

He is not used to having to win someone’s favor, not when he was the one whose favor was always sought.   All of this is new, and he doesn’t know how to make sense of it – especially considering it would be ludicrous for this girl, this ridiculous girl in his castle, to think he is anything more than a beast (he isn’t anything more than a beast).  

When the petal falls later that evening, and the shudder goes through the castle, he wonders if maybe things could change.  Maybe he could try – he’s charmed plenty of others before this girl.  But then, he remembers the way the girl yelled at him through the heavy oak of her door, her stubborn refusal to join him for dinner, and the conflicting emotions that rise inside his chest confuse him.

He’s not used to people disobeying him.

This girl that has wandered into his castle ( _demanding_ her father back) has already set his teeth on edge with her behavior twice, which is unparalleled (not even Lumière has ever been so disobedient, not even Cogsworth has been as stubborn as this girl).  She has locked herself in her room, rejected his request to eat with him, fought him tooth and nail as he tries to be hospitable (or, what passes for hospitable these days in this castle)

He is not used to this.  He is not used to people being so _difficult._

 

...

 

There have been others before Belle and her father – a few poor unfortunate souls caught by the storm, chased by the wolves, brought to him by the enchantress’ magic so that he could prove that he was not worthy of being human.   Each time, the servants invited them in, and only sometimes did they ever get as far as Belle’s father had before running, terrified and babbling about a talking clocks and teapots, back to their family who would then pass them off into the willing arms of the local asylum.  

(He knows this, because he has seen it before.  He knows this, because the mirror taunts him with a world he cannot enter and fates he cannot change.)

The first time that an unanticipated visitor ran screaming from the castle, he watched from the highest parapet and then by mirror.  It was deeply unsettling to see the fate of those who stumbled into his home, who saw the reality of his life but whose rantings and ravings were considered insane (if their families cannot believe those they love, then who would accept him for what he is?).  

 

…

  
He is not a fool – his actions have condemned them all to this life.  He knows, after all these years, that he is to blame for all the suffering in this castle.

He remembers the story of Daedalus and Icarus, of the hubris of them both.  When the curse was first cast, he wondered why his expensive education did not prepare him for his inevitable fall from the sky.   Instead, he would learn the lesson on his own, dressed in tattered rags and in a house full of the objects that he so desired when he wants human but would trade, now, for just one more glimpse of his own pale flesh.

Objects are nothing when there is no one to share them with.  Education matters little when trapped inside, unable to travel or communicate with the outside world.  Wealth, riches, power – nothing matters when you are alone and unloved, a grotesque monstrosity twisted to reflect the ugliness within.

His father had it wrong, in the end.  

“Love is fleeting, Adam,” his father had said.  “ _Life_ is fleeting, so live while you can, enjoy what you can, and damn the rest to hell.”

(Years later it will occur to him that this is not the life philosophy to impart on a boy of twelve, but neither Adam nor his father were known for making wise choices.)

 

….

 

She is beautiful, the girl – _Belle_ , he remembers (he has a bad habit of never learning names unless he needs them, and he needs hers) but he does not know if he can tolerate her foolishness, her belief that she can talk to him in such a way.  She is his prisoner, not his guest, no matter what airs the servants put on, no matter what lies they tell and what truths they hide.

She is beautiful for a peasant, but she is too bold and that is far too much, and when she wanders into his chambers she threatens to upset everything.  He was right in his behavior.  He was right to scare her away from the rose.   She threatens to upset everything, and that makes him angry.

But as she storms down the stairs, as she runs out the front door, the anger shifts into something that’s not anger, but rather something else that he can’t identify ( _she is far too much_ ).

He was right in his behavior…right?

He’s more than aware, after all these years with a tail where there shouldn’t be one, and paws and claws instead of hands and feet, that this is entirely his fault.   That his foolish behavior, that his reckless behavior has put him here, in the body of a beast with the awareness of a man and the knowledge that there is no way that anyone would come to love him.

It is not just his physical form that repulses; he knows he is has a repulsive nature.  He knows that he is prone to anger and rage, that he is moody and unkind, unappreciative and lacking in compassion or understanding.  He has made an effort, for what that is worth (not much) to change who he is, to become someone better, but that is difficult when most of the household skitters away at the sight of him, when the staff that stays doesn’t seem to care much for his efforts because they know him so well.

It has been foolish for them to hope that he will be someone different, something different, around this girl.

And as he watches her run from his open window, he is also aware that the wolves who brought her father here will also find her.  The wolves, puppets of the enchantress, that both guard and guide people to his ruined home. The wolves will find her, and her horse, and will kill her.

That is, if he does not intervene.  

He has not left the castle in years, as not stepped foot outside the property, but the thought of Belle left to die in a snowbank turns his stomach.

When he makes his mind up, it’s because it is the right thing to do.  It is not because he is thinking about the curse, for it does not matter if she can end this curse.  He does not think she will, but he will not let her fall to the mercy of the wolves, not when he can do something to help her.

 

…

 

He remembers little of the fight, only kind eyes and gentle hands guiding him home, the fierce bite of astringent on his deep wounds, and restless sleep.

He dreams of his mother. In his dreams, he remembers her in this bed, wasting away to nothingness, wasting away before his eyes (before Paris, before everything changed).  

He dreams of Cogsworth, and Mrs. Potts, Lumière and Plumette, in their human forms, so brilliant and bright and he misses them as they run from his reach.

He dreams of the night everything changed.

  
He dreams of the night Belle arrived.

When he wakes, she is still there.  There is a kindness in her eyes as she wipes the fevered sweat from his brow, a faint smile as he makes a comment about her choice of literature.

She has not died, and there is something inside him that seems to come alive at her touch, at the sound of her voice, at the thought that she did not leave him to die either.

For the first time, he wonders if this is what hope feels like.

There is a girl in the castle, and he hopes she will stay.


End file.
